Ch 19 – 32 Minutes

The wedding was ten days away and I was getting nowhere fast finding the Grandmother Nurse. My days were spent continuing to not learn the beautiful prose that is the Danish language and staring for an hour at the Cardboard Cutout of the Princess that was in fact, THE Princess trapped in some sort of weird cardboardian prison. If I had watched Star Wars I would have gotten the numerous Han Solo jokes made by my guards. Alas, the only frame of reference I had for Han Solo is what the one guard suggested I do with my alone time.

It’s tough being six.

On this day, February 2nd, 2012, ten days before the Royal Wedding I asked to be allowed to walk the royal grounds. I needed to get out and clear my head. I had the mental baggage most normal six year olds carry around with them. You know, like getting married, becoming King, having my life threatened and crawling through the birth canal once again.

It’s really tough being six.

Fortunate for me, one of the guards saw the desperation in my eyes, mistook it for something else and let me walk around “For thirty-two minutes, no more no less.” I thanked him and galloped down the hallway, out the door, down four flights of steps, through the fake painting that was in fact a door, past Tooks and Snooks, the guard snakes and finally out the screen door into the fresh air.

I was down to twenty-four minutes.

Besides the lack of available time, the other problem I faced was once again being distracted by my surroundings and not focusing on the task at hand, which was finding the Grandmother Nurse. Therefore I had to go back through the screen door, past Tooks and Snooks, the guard snakes, through the fake painting that was in fact a door, up four flights of steps, open the door and gallop down the hallway to a solid oak door.

Then I remembered that the solid oak door was my door and I had gone back to my room.

Damn you attention span!

I had killed exactly half of my allotted free time and had made no progress whatsoever. Cursing myself for not finding out where the Grandmother Nurse lived BEFORE I requested my excursion I was at a total loss and with my head down in defeat re-entered my room sixteen minutes early.

The moment I walked in the Cardboard Cutout of the Princess sprung to life, screaming at me to get out there and find the Grandmother Nurse. Fighting back tears I begged her to stop yelling, that I didn’t know and I didn’t know how I was going to know and I didn’t know that I would not know knowing how to go and besides…

“You FOOL!” she screamed interrupting me again, “just look her up in the index!”

“The index?”

“Check the dresser drawer, there should be a book with the room number and phone number of every employee here in the castle.”

“Would Fred be in there too?”

“Of course he would, everyone is.”

I scrambled to the drawer, pulled it open and dumped the contents all over the floor. The book was roughly the size of one of those pads newspaper boys named Jon use to record all their transactions. I went to the back, found the index and then realized I had a bigger problem – I didn’t know what the Grandmother Nurse’s name actually was.

“Princess, do you know what her name really is?”

“I know all the names of all my subjects. Her name is Vera Gebuhr.”

“So in the index we all have a name. Her name is Vera Gebuhr.”

“That’s what I said.”

“Her name is Vera Gebuhr.”

“Yes.”

“Her name is Vera Gebuhr.”

“Kid you are really starting to freak me out when you repeat the same shit over and over.”

I located Vera’s room number, apologized for freaking out the Cardboard Cutout of the Princess and went to the door. As I gripped the handle I looked at the clock and saw I was down to seven minutes. Fear seized my tiny balls as I debated what to do. Do I run as fast as I could to Vera’s room, apologize for jumping out the window, convince her to let me come out of her old vagina again and then run back up here in time OR do I sit on my bed and try to convince the guard to let me out tomorrow.

Six minutes…

Clearly this was a life-altering moment, and in that moment I decided to let fate and my tiny legs carry me to where I needed to go. I flung the door open and made my way down the hall. She was only three flights down, I would have to be fast.